Bombay high court tells man to pay wife after adultery ploy fails

MUMBAI: A man's attempt to avoid paying maintenance to his estranged wife by furnishing her signed confessional statement about indulging in adultery failed to pass muster with the Bombay high court.

Justice T V Nalawade expressed doubts that an educated woman would sign such a statement of her own free will and ordered Ahmednagar resident Amit Tambe to pay maintenance to his wife Shalini.

"It does not look probable that an educated lady like the wife in the present case would give an admission in writing about illicit relations," said Justice Nalawade.

"The fact that the document is shown to be executed in the house of husband needs to be kept in mind. It also needs to be kept in mind that the husband has not given other particulars of the said man like his name. It is not the case of the husband that he had personal knowledge about relations or he had at any time made inquiry. He had only suspicion as he had allegedly seen the wife talking on mobile with somebody. All these circumstances have created doubt about defence taken by the husband," the judge added.

Amit and Shalini's marriage lasted barely a year, before she claimed she was thrown out of her matrimonial home in 2006. Amit claimed that she had left of her own accord. In 2010, a magistrate's court asked Amit to pay his wife a monthly maintenance of Rs 900 after she filed an application under Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Under the law, a wife can seek maintenance from the husband on grounds of neglect. The sessions court struck it down on the basis of a document signed allegedly by Shalini where she admitted to an illicit relation and said she had left the house of her own accord and was giving up all claims.

Shalini then approached the HC in appeal. The court said that under the law "wife is given statutory right to get maintenance from the husband". Maintenance can be claimed even after a divorce if the wife doesn't remarry. The court said if there was no divorce, the husband was required to prove following things to avoid liability of maintenance, that the wife has refused to live with him unless she can prove there were valid grounds to live apart; or that they are living separately by mutual consent or she is living in adultery. The court observed that in the present case there was no allegation that Shalini was living in adultery and she had made attempts to go back to the matrimonial home. "These circumstances are sufficient to infer that case of the wife is more probable in nature that the husband has refused and neglected to maintain her," said the judge.(Names of the couple changed to protect their identities).